The property company Bovale Developments Ltd, its director, Mr Thomas Bailey, and his wife, Caroline, were yesterday granted leave by the High Court to challenge the right of the Flood tribunal to investigate their personal financial affairs in public.
Mr Justice Carney gave leave to the three applicants to seek a judicial review of this week's decision by Mr Justice Flood to proceed with the investigation of their personal financial affairs in his inquiries into possible payments made on behalf of the company.
He also made an order restraining the tribunal from proceeding to hear further evidence from the applicants pending the outcome of the judicial review, which he said should be dealt with as quickly as possible.
He also put a stay on the tribunal proceeding to hear evidence from the applicants on these matters pending the conclusion of the judicial review.
Counsel for the applicants, Mr John Gordon SC, submitted that the decision to hear the evidence in public would involve a disproportionate interference with their constitutional rights without a corresponding benefit to the public interest. He alleged that Mr Justice Flood had failed to protect their rights in this regard.
In an affidavit read out in court, Mr Thomas Bailey, of Batterstown, Co Meath, stated that in a letter of January 20th last the tribunal had sought information about the intimate financial affairs of himself and his wife. These included a schedule of all assets held by them as and of July 1st, 1987, and June 30th, 1991.
The tribunal had sought information relating to cheques withdrawn from Bovale's bank account and lodged to their personal accounts, and also of cash payments in the so-called "kitten book", which recorded a series of cash payments made on behalf of Bovale Developments.
Mr Bailey said that he and his wife would be greatly prejudiced by the proposed "public ventilation" of their personal financial affairs. Such an examination, if conducted in public, would expose their intimate and personal financial transactions to public scrutiny.
The information sought - in particular in connection with the schedule of assets - would involve stripping bare their private affairs in public.
A submission made by counsel for the tribunal appeared to concede that the proposed examination would constitute a trawl of their private affairs.
That submission bore out his [Mr Bailey's] concern that the tribunal wished to engage in such a trawl of their financial affairs in circumstances where a proper evidential basis had not been established. "I am at a loss to know why it is necessary to conduct such a trawl in public", Mr Bailey said.